Cav's Place

Since, through essentially a trick that I have very serious problems with and will write about in more detail later, Remus Cernea‘s new party, the Greens’ Movement (MV), is about to be legally created under the official full name of Greens’ Movement – Agrarian Democrats (MVDA), it may be a good time to go through the history of green and ecologist parties in Romania, sad as it is. The information has been gathered from a few sources that should be trustworthy, but it has also been tied together with a fair amount of guesswork, so if you have more accurate facts or simply additional verifiable data, do correct me.

The first such party, the Romanian Ecologist Party (PER), was created in the late ’70s, as a response to the Communist Party’s drive for economic growth at all costs, utterly destroying the environment in the process. As you can guess, this was not something that was usually tolerated back then, but the party’s founder was eventually not jailed because the regime didn’t consider PER a threat, plus that even some of its own leaders were somewhat worried by the environmental degradation. As such, for over a decade, PER members attempted to speak out against the regime’s environmental policies, but the need to avoid drawing even more negative attention meant there was in fact very little they could do.

Immediately after the Revolution, in December, 1989, PER started gathering the necessary signatures for official registration, completing the process in early January, 1990. At around the same time, another similar party, the Ecologist Movement of Romania (MER), was formed in Bucharest by another person. Other ecologist parties were forming at the same time in various parts of the country, including another PER, which a splinter group from MER tried to register, taking advantage of the fact that the “real” PER wasn’t yet officially registered. What resulted was a mess typical for the time, during which various people jumped from one party to another, claiming leadership and possibly even acting as the leaders of either party.
Once the dust settled somewhat, PER and MER remained two distinct entities, but the two parties allied with each other and the Romanian Social Democrat Party (PSDR) in that initial mess of a parliament we had between 1990 and 1992, before the first real elections. In the lower chamber, MER held 12 seats, PER eight and PSDR two, making the group the fourth force at the time. In the Senate, however, PER had two seats, MER one and PSDR none, PER and MER allying with the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party (PNTCD) to form a group that was the second force in the upper chamber at the time. Of course, with the National Salvation Front (FSN) dominating both chambers so completely, that didn’t count for much.

When the 1992 elections came along, PER participated as part of the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) and was the only ecologist party to still make it into the parliament, obtaining no seats in the Senate but all of four in the Chamber of Deputies. The four were, however, allied with the party that practically led CDR, PNTCD, and together they formed the second largest group in the lower chamber, edging out the Democratic Party (PD) by one seat. Strangely enough, the other parties that formed the CDR seem to have formed their own separate groups, if the official records are to be trusted.
However, exactly what PER stood for at the time is less clear. According to an article written by PER’s founder that I recently read, after that initial mess settled down, some of PER’s leaders were part of the splinter group that separated from MER early on and it was these people that generally steered the party ever since, or at least until recently. He claims that these people, who have also most often represented the party in the parliament, changed the original direction of the party and generally turned it into yet another one that’s just as rotten as the major ones, despite having a much lower visibility and next to no real impact. And from what I know I can agree with what the party was turned into, though I can’t know what the original direction was to be able to say whether that signified a major shift or not.

Moving on, CDR won the elections in 1996, with PER and also something called the Romanian Ecologist Federation (FER) as part of it. PER had five seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one in the Senate, while FER had only one in each. However, in the absolute disaster that the CDR legislature ended up being, there were several changes in the names that occupied those seats and it would also appear that one person from PER ended up as independent of any parliamentary group eventually, though apparently still part of the party. Still, PER and FER were allied in the lower chamber with PNTCD and some of the representatives of the Alternative for Romania Party (PAR), forming the second largest group. However, the group formed by PNTCD, PAR and PER in the Senate was only the fourth largest, FER’s sole representative allying with the other two parties that made up CDR, namely PNL and the sole representative of the National Liberal Party – Democratic Convention (PNLCD) to form the second largest group, edging PD out by one seat.

Yet, as I said, the CDR legislature turned out to be a complete disaster, the alliance disbanded and all the parties that had formed it collapsed at the next elections. The only one to still manage to make it into the parliament afterwards was PNL, obtaining a relatively low number of seats in 2000 but recovering afterwards and currently being Romania’s third largest party. As a result, no green or ecologist parties have been represented in the Romanian parliament since the year 2000.
Still, despite the number of votes obtained by green or ecologist parties in Romania since 2000 being extremely small at a national level, PER continues to exist and other parties holding the same values, perhaps even to a larger extent, have formed over the past several years. Occasionally, on a strictly local level, these parties have managed to remain somewhat relevant, PER having a few mayors and some seats in several local councils and even the other, newer, green or ecologist parties having managed to gain the attention of a sufficiently large minority of voters to have a token representation in a few places. For example, at the last local elections, in 2008, PER obtained three mayoral seats and three different parties with green or ecologist values won seats in various local councils, PER having a total of 180, the Green Party (PV) a total of 40 and the Ecologist Alternative Party (PAE) a total of 14.

Since I mentioned these other parties, I should also mention that PAE no longer exists as a separate entity, having recently been absorbed by the National Initiative Party (PIN). However, yet another ecologist party, the Romanian Ecologist Union (UER) does exist, though that’s largely all I know of it, the only times I saw the name outside of a simple list of registered political parties being when PER and PV were discussing their merger, UER being mentioned as potentially also being included in the new party both times.
PV, on the other hand, is a different matter. Founded towards the end of 2005 and officially registered in 2006, it quickly became a member of the European Greens, to date being the only Romanian green or ecologist party to claim such membership. Not that it helped them in the 2007 European Parliament elections, when they ranked last with all of 0.38%. That didn’t stop them, however, and they struggled to grow and become more relevant, but their best result so far was the 0.62% obtained by Remus Cernea in the 2009 presidential elections. As a curiosity, PV has granted its honorary president title to the person who was MER’s sole senator between 1990 and 1992 and FER’s sole senator between 1996 and 2000.

Which brings us to the current situation. With the addition of MVDA, which I will from now on insist on calling only MV, it can be said that Romania has three green or ecologist parties that at least some people know of, and here I’m talking about PV, PER and MV, and one, UER, that hardly anyone has heard of. It could also be argued that PIN now has an ecologist component, but other recent announcements make me seriously doubt that PIN could still have anything worth mentioning in a positive manner, so I’ll leave that out.
The number may soon change, however, because PV and PER are once again discussing merging into a single party, called the Green Ecologist Party (PVE), possibly also absorbing UER in the process. If these negotiations will actually prove successful this time around, we’ll be left with two parties with this doctrine, namely PVE and MV. Close collaborations between these two parties seem unlikely, however, the differences between the two leaderships appearing irreconcilable and in fact Remus Cernea having stated that he wants nothing more to do with the kind of people that make up the other such parties from Romania. More worryingly, at least for someone who would just want to see something done for the environment as soon as possible and at all costs, these differences seem to have little to do with environmental issues and a lot to do with other aspects such as the rights of ethnic Magyars and the extent to which concepts like the separation of church and state and LGBT rights should be supported at the present time in the Romanian society.

But this is already long enough, so I’ll follow with details about the relations and interactions between PV, PER and MV and the similarities, differences and issues between these three parties in another post. That post should also include what I understand of the method chosen by MV to get itself officially registered… Unless it’ll once again get too long before I’ll reach that point.